Anton's Odyssey (25 page)

“It’s required because of the cargo we are transporting.” Allen reversed the video and paused on the image of the rail gun propped up in the corner. “If you notice, there’s no trigger guard, and the trigger itself runs the full length of the pistol grip. It’s an arrangement specific to weapons meant to be fired in the vacuum of space. The shooter would be wearing the bulky gloves of a pressure suit.”

“Yes that’s all very interesting,” Ellen said, somewhat irritated, “but it still doesn’t really answer my question.”

“The weapon would provide a tactical advantage were the ship confronted with pirates wanting to loot cargo.” Allen clarified. “The idea is that the shooter walks out of the airlock wearing a pressurized suit and magnetic boots. He would fire on the pirates when they attempt to board. Keep in mind armor plating is very expensive and used almost exclusively by the Space Marines. A blast from a rail gun would easily penetrate the hull from an unarmored ship and cause explosive decompression of the vessel.”

“Why not use a phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range?” I had heard so much about the weapon recently that I couldn’t help but ask.

Allen smiled. He clearly approved
of my interest in gun lore. “A phased plasma rifle in the forty watt range would be equally if not more effective than a rail gun, but much more expensive. My guess is that Heavy Industries General LLC wanted to pay as little as possible to comply with the Department of Corrections’ minimum standards.”

“Department of Corrections?”
Ellen asked, confused. Evidently Allen never told her we were transporting thousands of cryogens.

To avoid answering Ellen’s query, Allen quickly brought up some more surveillance footage. “So it looks like the squad split up to look for Joinksmokker. These two were the first to make contact.” The man in the bright purple pajamas was paired with a buddy in an orange jumpsuit. As they rounded the corner of a minor passageway, a large dent suddenly appeared in the wall just a few centimeters away from the pajama man’s head.

“See check this out,” Allen said enthusiastically, reversing the footage and playing it back frame by frame. “This is so cool! Joinksmokker fired the pistol he stole from Boldergat.” He pointed at the screen. “See this tiny grey blur here?”

“Yeah,” we said.

“That’s a forty gram osmium alloy low penetrating round. Watch what happens when it strikes the wall.”

Pajama man’s face stayed nearly motionless, his eyelids quivering ever so slightly as he began a blink. The grey cone-like frustum impacted the wall and deformed into a disc as flat as a pancake. The flattened structure continued forward, pushing the thick metal wall inward about ten centimeters before coming to a stop. Pajama man had not yet reached the midpoint of his blink.

“That’s so cool!” Cotton squeaked.

“Forty gram round!”
Hammond said. “That would have taken pajama man’s head off.”

“Would have,” Allen agreed, “but the soft alloy in the bullet could never cause significant structural damage to the outer hull of a ship.”

Allen reverted the footage back to its normal speed. Pajama man panicked and shrieked. The man in the orange jump suit pulled his teammate around the corner and used his com unit to alert the rest of the squad to Joinksmokker’s position. The next image was a cutaway of Joinksmokker fleeing the scene of the shooting.

“So
this is the moment of truth,” Allen said bringing up more footage. “Here we see Joinksmokker open the door to a starboard airlock. Pajama man and his teammate must have chased him to the periphery of the ship. See how the door automatically shuts behind him. That’s an engineering control safety device. Okay, so he takes a step forward, and look what happens.” In the opposite wall, another door opened and Boldergat and the man in the dressing gown stepped in, pistols at the ready. Boldergat screamed, “Drop the weapon Joinksmokker, or I swear we will kill you!”

“Hey the voice over is much better now.” Hammond observed.

“Yes, when I corrected the lip sync program for pitch and emotion, I started from the end and worked backward. This is very near the end.” Allen said ominously.

Joinksmokker spun around to flee from Boldergat, but pajama man and his buddy entered the airlock from the door Joinksmokker had just used. Two more men, the hairy guy in boxer shorts and another in a jump suit, appeared right under the camera from a third door.

“So Joinksmokker’s trapped,” Allen commented, “and based on the lucid look on his face, it seems like he’s finally coming down off the fenes.”

Again, Boldergat barked, “Drop the pistol!” Only this time Joinksmokker complied, placing the gun on the floor in front of him and raising his hands. The guy in boxer shorts rushed forward and snatched the pistol up off the floor.

“It’s over!” Ellen said with misguided relief. “They’ve caught him!”

“One would think,” Allen said. “This next part happens so fast the only way to see it is if I
slow the feed rate down to quarter speed.

In the doorway, under the camera, Bob Blunt appeared and shouldered the rail gun. With a look of horror, Boldergat’s tongue touched the back of his teeth and his lips rounded as he mouthed the word “no!” A bright muzzle
flash, and Joinksmokker’s body split apart at the seams as the rail gun bullet struck him near the navel. Joinksmokker’s intestines spewed out behind him, and his head and torso became detached from his waist. Cotton shrieked, and Ellen covered her eyes with her hands. Sickened, Hammond vomited all over Allen’s floor.

“The high velocity armor-piercing tungsten carbide round punched a hole in the airlock wall.
” Allen commented. “The hole caused the airlock to depressurize. Had the breech in the hull occurred elsewhere in the ship, and not in an airlock, many of us would have died.”

The small hole was apparent in the wall facing the camera. Joinksmokker’s entrails squeezed through the orifice as if it were the mouth of a gluttonous man slurping spaghetti. Cracks appeared adjacent to the hole, and suddenly the edges of the crack buckled and bent outward. The two halves of Joinksmokker’s body were vented into space, and I could tell from the really confused look on his face that Harvey was somehow still alive. The guy in boxers was next. He managed to grab the cracked edge of the wall briefly. The explosive wind from rapidly expanding gases caused his boxers to fly off his legs; his dong dangled in the breeze. In an instant, he lost his grip and was gone. Boldergat followed. Feet first, his girth plugged the hole in the airlock briefly. His pained face turned bright red as if he were sitting on the toilet trying to pass a stubborn bowel movement, but with a pop, he was gone. The entire far wall broke
off into space, which vented the remaining contents of the airlock including pajama man, our jackass steward, the four other members of the armed response team, and the camera. As the camera spun around, I got a quick look at our ship and the gaping hole in its starboard side before the image finally went blank.

When Cotton snored, he made soft slurping noises that sort of faded into the background as white noise. The sounds never keep me up at night. Mother’s snores, on the other hand, were completely different. As a cacophony of high pitched strider and baritone wheezes emitted from the far reaches of her throat, I could match the soundtrack to nothing more peaceful than the mental imagine of our federal government detonating neutrino bombs to char a compound of piety-freaks and their hostages. In the past I tried anything to make her stop; bumping her bed, rolling her over, even pinching her nose shut and trying to shake her awake, but when she made those awful noises, it meant she was so deep into a quadrazapam-induced slumber, that there was no waking her. In this state Dr. Zanders could cut out her spleen, and she probably wouldn’t even stir.

I lay awake on my bunk as my mother’s snores caused the thin walls of our living unit to resonate and rattle. Hours later I had an epiphany, several of them actually. Somehow sleep deprivation inspired a devious scheme that could guarantee me restful sleep every night for the rest of the voyage. It was time to put Cotton’s inadvertent discovery to good use.

I plugged my pocket module into the side of our vid screen, and after an agonizingly long search, managed to locate Command Central. I logged in as Captain Shatlino. As his password, I tried “bourbon” which the computer flagged as invalid.
Two more chances
, I thought.
It probably wouldn’t be “Thurgood,” so let’s try “MacDougal.”
I hit “enter,” and I was in.

I checked the captain’s log, and found that the names of Harvey Joinksmokker, Ricardo Meddlenates, Bob Blunt, James Boldergat, and the other five members of the armed response team had been added en block to the “deceased list” below Edward Sanstet. In flashing red letters, a line at the top of the screen read, “Crew ten hands below compliment, new hires authorized.” I looked over the different possible commands. Under “crew,” I located “fill position” and the sub-heading “promote internally.” Using my executive power as the ship’s captain, I promoted one Melinda D. Dullwid to the position of steward and rated her ordinary starman. I upgraded her pay and benefits to correspond to her new rank and assigned new living quarters. Sadly, the number of hands below compliment decreased from ten to nine, indicating my mother’s
former position was very much redundant. I was very tempted to list Cotton and myself as beneficiaries for Bob Blunt’s worker’s compensation death benefits, but thought better of it and logged off. Mother had finally stopped snoring, so I returned to my bunk and fell asleep.

Before class the next morning, I decided to stop by the steward’s office to see if my escapades on Command Central the previous night had paid off. Cotton tagged along as usual. A young officer sat at Bob’s former desk. She had reddish-brown hair and freckles and didn’t seem much older than myself. The insignia on her epaulets indicated the lowest rank of the junior officers. She didn’t seem to notice us, preoccupied instead with punching commands into a computer, sighing, and scratching her head. She seemed frustrated, frazzled even, as if she had just been assigned a task she had no idea how to execute. I had to clear my throat to get her attention.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“Yes, we were friends of Bob Blunt.” I lied.

“We were?” Cotton said, surprised.

Fortunately the junior officer had glanced back down at the vid screen, her mind lingering on the duty that left her frustrated. This gave me a chance to discretely kicked Cotton, a cue to follow my lead.

“Bob Blunt,” the officer said, finally giving us her undivided attention, “he was the steward wasn’t he?”

“Yes, I’ve been putting this off because it’s been so painful,” I said stifling a false sniffle, “but I was meaning to secure his belongings for his folks back home.”

At best, Cotton was a mediocre actor, but that day he put on his best performance yet and somehow managed to get himself to burst into tears, real tears. “It’s just so sad!” he blubbered, “We miss him so much!”

The officer immediately cheered-up, which would have been an extremely inappropriate
response had our expressions of grief been remotely sincere. Some sort of load had just been taken off her shoulders.

“Perhaps you can help me,” she said, “I’ve been ordered to get his living unit ready for his replacement today, and I’ve got so many more important things to do. I am glad you guys came
forward. It seems he was very unpopular. Some people even blame him for the accident last week. Nobody’s offered to help until now.”

“He was misunderstood,” I said
. “He was an okay guy once you got to know him.”

The officer handed us two large folding boxes. “If you could put his personal property in the green
one, that would be great. Place ship property in the purple one. Come back here when you are done.”

“Ship property?” I asked.

“Yes, his uniforms, and anything labeled ‘Magic Sky Daddy.’ Of course you should just leave furnishings in place. I’ll unlock his unit for you from here.”

We thanked the officer and left. Cotton followed me back to our living unit where I grabbed one of our
slate grey mock canvas travel bags and hacked back into Command Central briefly to locate Bob Blunt’s living quarters. Asking the officer where Bob lived would have been a dead giveaway that we were up to no good.

“We’re going to be late for class,” Cotton protested, “and we haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“I am sure Jackass Bob has some food in his living unit,” I reassured Cotton, “and I am equally sure the nice officer lady can write us an excuse for class.”

“She was nice,” Cotton said lustily.

In the passageway, Cotton asked me, “Who do you think’s going to be the new steward.”

“It’s going to be mother,” I said.

“Really, she’s been promoted?” Cotton said with disbelief. “How do you know?”

“I just do.” I didn’t want to tell Cotton that I figured out the Captain’s password because I doubted he could keep the secret to himself. Once Sorca and Stronzo knew, the whole ship would know.

“Do you think she’s up for it?” Cotton worried. “I mean, do you think she can figure out how to program a jano-bot?”

“We can help her.” I said.

“We don’t know how to program a jano-bot either,” Cotton pointed out.

“We can get Allen to help us,” I said.

“You sure?” Cotton asked. “I mean he sort of stopped inviting us over. Even before the accident he hardly ever talked to us anymore.”

“Don’t worry about that.” I said. “He’s just working through some issues. He will help us if we ask him nice
ly.”

Bob had lived in an impressively large living unit. I suspected he had abused his position and assigned himself quarters normally designated for an able starman with a large family.

“Look at the size of this place!” Cotton said. “Are we going to live here?”

“I suppose you can if you want to,” I said, “but I’m planning to stay at our current place.”

“Really why?”

“To get away from mother.”

“What’s wrong with mom?”

“She snores.” I said, citing my inspiration for one of my more brilliant acts of mischief. “Also, I think Mr. Fox is interested in her, so it would be nice to have her out before she invites him over.”

“Mr. Fox, the social studies teacher? The guy with the weird hairdo that looks like some sort of crash helmet?” Cotton asked incredulously.

“Yeah, that guy.”

“Oh that’s gross!” Cotton cried.

“Yeah, it is,” I agreed, “but on the bright side, I doubt he’d drink Thurgood MacDougal’s Southern Style Bourbon until he passes out and then piss
himself on our couch.”

“Well, yeah,” Cotton said. “That’s ‘
cause we don’t have a couch”

“I suppose not.” I agreed. Still, for some reason Mr. Fox struck me as a teetotaler.

After a brief pause, Cotton asked, “Do you think mom will get mad?”

“Mad at
who? Mr. Fox?”

“No,
mad at you for not living with her.”

“I don’t know why she would,” I said. “I mean back home we spent four nights a week at Billy’s place and she never seemed to care.”

“That’s a good point,” Cotton agreed.

Cotton located and devoured a packet of tapioca pudding while I ransacked Bob’s closet. He had four orange jumpsuits and two orange hats. I figured he was only officially issued three jumpsuits and one baseball cap, and when he was vented out into space he was fully uniformed, so I placed both caps and two
jumpsuits into our slate grey mock canvas travel bag and two jumpsuits into the purple box. I packed Bob’s underthings and the rest of his clothes into the green box.

Cotton had been contemplating his own future living arrangements as he ate his unhealthy breakfast. “Can I live with you?” he asked meekly.

“Sure,” I said.

“Can I still have the top bunk?” he asked optimistically.

“I was going to move into mom’s room once she moves here,” I said, “so you can have both bunks if you want. Now that I think about it, you can have our whole room entirely to yourself. Just try and keep it reasonably clean.”

“Sweet!”
Cotton cried gleefully. As far back as I could remember, we never had separate rooms.

Bob had a pretty sweet deck, not as nice as any of Allen’s but nicer than anything Cotton and I had ever stolen before. There was a gummy residue across the front where Bob had removed the label that read “property of Magic Sky Daddy.” I stashed the deck in our slate grey mock canvas travel bag.

Under Bob’s mattress we found a stash of skin mags. “Check this out,” Cotton cried, “Guns and Gals Magazine!” On the cover a woman shouldered an auto carbine, her giant fake boobs busting out the sides of a tiny forest green camouflaged bikini.

“We should give that to Allen,” I said. “He likes guns, and I think he might even like girls too.”

“Naw,” Cotton protested, “lemme keep it.”

“We’ve already made out pretty good from this haul of loot,” I said. “We really should spread the wealth. Allen’s been having a rough time ever since you poked that guy’s eye out.
Kind of freaked him out. I think the mag might cheer him up.”

Cotton agreed. There were a couple of mainstream skin mags we kept for ourselves. The rest were pretty raunchy, titles I had never heard of. One showed close-ups of people doing it, and another featured farm animals. Between classes later that day, I gave the really nasty magazines to Hammond.

“These are nasty,” he said with feigned indignation. “Why would you think I would want these?”

“Just thought I’d give you first dibs before I tossed them,” I said.

“I can throw them away for you,” Hammond suggested.

“Really,” I said, “I mean it’s no trouble for me to dispose of them if they offend you.”

“No, I can do it,” he said. “I appreciate you thinking of me, and the least I can do is help out.” As Hammond rounded the corner, I heard him turn a page in one of the magazines and mutter, “Oh, that’s sweet!”

After school, mother greeted me at our living unit. Smiling, she wore an orange jumpsuit. “You like it?” she asked, twirling around as if she were modeling some sort of high fashion nightdress.

“Sure,” I said as if I were truly obvious. “Where did you get it?”

“I have great news Anthony,” she said
, beaming. “I’ve been promoted.”